The Rock Hyrax: Elephants’ Unexpected Relative

When looking at an elephant, it may seem logical to assume that it would be related to a large, grey animal like the rhino, but that guess would be wrong. Interestingly, the elephant’s closest relatives look nothing like them. While this topic remains somewhat controversial in the scientific community, some have pointed to the rock hyrax as the closest living evolutionary relative to the elephant¹. It is important to emphasize, however, that this argument doesn’t come without controversy, and many have pushed back on the idea of hyraxes being the elephants’ closest relatives². The rock hyrax(Procavia capensis) is a small, furry, groundhog-like mammal that lives in rocky crevices in most parts of Africa³. Like the elephant, the rock hyrax belongs to Afrotheria, which is a superorder consisting of early mammalian ancestors of AfroArabian origin dating back from 80 to 100 million years ago⁴. They even belong to the same clade within Afrotheria, called Paenungulata. The rock hyrax belongs to the order Hyracoidea, which diverged from the elephant’s evolutionary path around 65 million years ago⁵. This may sound like a long time ago, but is actually not that distant on the evolutionary time scale. When considering the elephant’s size and appearance in comparison to the rock hyrax, this comes as quite the surprise. <a href="https://medium.com/elp-rumbles/the-rock-hyrax-elephants-unexpected-relative-f0844bf3e535">Website</a>